Rapid advances in automation have the potential to disrupt a number of sectors, perhaps none more so than the automobile industry. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has accordingly announced its intention to take “active steps to prepare for the future by engaging with new technologies to ensure safety without hampering innovation.” Most recently, on October 4, 2018, DOT issued Preparing for the Future of Transportation: Automated Vehicles 3.0 (AV 3.0), its third round of guidance on the topic. Like its 2017 predecessor, “Automated Driving Systems 2.0: A Vision for Safety,” AV 3.0 emphasizes the development of voluntary, consensus-based technical standards and approaches while noting that there are cross-cutting policy issues where federal leadership may be necessary. AV 3.0 also builds on its predecessors by emphasizing that it reflects the view of all of DOT’s operating administrations; by providing much more detailed guidance on the development and testing of automated vehicle technologies; and by announcing some specific regulatory steps DOT plans to take in the near future. (more…)

A stringof Governmental announcements have increasingly sounded the alarm about the growing cybersecurity threat facing the energy sector. Among other things, these reports have announced that state-sponsored cyber actors have successfully gained access to the control rooms of utilities. The hackers, one of the reports notes, could have used such access to cause blackouts.

As one of the epicenters of the Information Age and largest state in the Nation, California’s regulatory decisions can have an outsize impact on the data economy. Recently, the State has tried to use this pride of place to stamp its imprint on two important public debates. First, on September 30, 2018, Governor Brown signed into law the California Internet Consumer Protection and Net Neutrality Act of 2018 (Senate Bill 822), which seeks to impose, as a matter of state law, net neutrality regulation even more restrictive than the federal regime the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) repealed earlier this year. Second, earlier this year, California enacted (and then subsequently amended) the California Consumer Privacy of 2018, the broadest privacy law in the United States. As laid out below, these enactments have sparked legal and policy debates over whether California should be able to set rules that could become de facto national standards or whether federal rules do or should preempt California’s efforts. (more…)

The Trump Administration continued to put its stamp on federal cybersecurity policy last week, as the White House issued its National Cyber Strategy while the Pentagon announced the Department of Defense Cyber Strategy. The former document is a helpful step forward that continues and advances the cyber policies the Trump Administration inherited from the Obama and Bush Administrations, while the Pentagon’s release primarily focused on the Strategy’s endorsement of “Defense Forward,” which was taken as a signal the United States would be adopting a more aggressive operational posture in the future. Data Matters readers will want to study both strategies, as each contains interesting insights into how the Trump Administration envisions the development of the cybersecurity ecosystem and see the public and private sectors working together to mitigate cyber risks. (more…)

On Sept. 25, 2018, the Trump administration proposed an approach and initiated a process to modernize U.S. data privacy policy. The administration’s approach is “risk-based” rather than rule-based, and, as such, signals a willingness to move away from a privacy model of mandated notice and choice that has “resulted primarily in long, legal, regulator-focused privacy policies and check boxes.” Rather, the administration is proposing that U.S. privacy policy “refocus” on achieving desirable privacy “outcomes,” such as ensuring that users are “reasonably informed” and can “meaningfully express” their privacy preferences, while providing organizations with the flexibility to continuing innovating with cutting-edge business models and technologies.

On September 26, the Senate Commerce Committee invited tech and telecom companies to the Hill to discuss safeguards for consumer data privacy. “The question,” noted Chairman John Thune, “is no longer whether we need a federal law to protect consumers’ privacy. The question is what shape that law should take.” The Senators and testifying witnesses expressed strong support for a comprehensive federal privacy law. (more…)

*This article first appeared in the Washington Post on September 26, 2018.

In a recent piece for Washington Post Outlook, Chris Fonzone and Josh Geltzer (from the Georgetown Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection) explained why a legal case that began with a dispute between a Loudoun County supervisor and a constituent may help set a new standard for online interaction nationally:

A legal case that began with a dispute between a member of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors and a constituent may help to set the rules for how government officials — up to and including President Trump — interact with the public online. A federal appeals court in Richmond will hear the case this week, and, while the stakes of the conflict may seem small at first — one man was banned for a day from an official’s Facebook page — it has potentially enormous First Amendment implications.(more…)

An increasing number of eyes are now turning to the U.S. Congress to see how it will react to these developments, and Data Matters – and the privacy community generally – will thus be closely watching the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on Wednesday, September 26, 2018, when it hosts a hearing titled “Examining Safeguards for Consumer Data Privacy.” (more…)

On June 29, the day after California Governor Jerry Brown signed the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) into law, Data Matters provided a summary of the important new legislation. In doing so, we noted that the law was scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2020 and that, if and when it did, it would be the “broadest privacy law in the United States” and “may well have an outsize influence on privacy laws nationwide.” Because of this, we further predicted that “[t]he coming months will no doubt stimulate considerable legislative and litigation activity to test the acceptability of [the CCPA’s] effects on interstate commerce, free speech, commercial innovation, reasonable regulatory burdens and meaningful privacy protection.” (more…)